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[0:00] Jeryl Brunner: From Shakespeare to sports, from Falsey to Alvin Ailey, from Santam to Burelis, from McNally to Faye. It happened to the greats, it still happens every day. When lightning strikes is the moment you know. When lightning strikes, where your matter goes you can stand and tell your rega. Do whatever you like. You'll never forget the moments when lightning strikes.

[0:26] Jeryl Brunner: Hi, this is Jeryl Brunner, and you're listening to When Lightning Strikes, where we talk about the tingly mic drop moments that led you to becoming an artist.

[0:40] Jeryl Brunner: Shanda Sawyer is a very prolific director, choreographer, and executive producer. She has directed shows for Marvel, FOX, ABC, Disney, and Comedy Central. Her work has garnered many awards, including two Emmys, a Gracie, and a Peabody. Most recently, she has been the creative director of the Big Apple Circus 2024 show, Hometown Playground, now playing through January 5, 2025. Welcome.

[1:20] Shanda Sawyer: Hi, so great to be here.

[1:22] Jeryl Brunner: So nice to be here.

[1:22] Shanda Sawyer: Yeah, nice to meet you.

[1:24] Jeryl Brunner: So tell me about the Big Apple Circus. When that came into your life.

[1:31] Shanda Sawyer: Oh my goodness. I was so excited. I got a call from Glenn Orsher and Michael Cole from EMC Present. And they said we'd love to have you come in and do the Big Apple this year. And I was so honored because, as you know, the Big Apple is just this iconic, iconic New York tradition. It's such an incredible holiday tradition for so many generations of families. And it was such an honor to be asked to come in. I felt like it was so important to this year more than ever really celebrate the Big Apple's iconic relationship with New York City. You know, it's New York City's hometown circus. It's been around since the 70s with a few little bumps in the road. And it was just so important to me to really celebrate New York City, which is, of course, the most incredible city in the world, as we know, and has the incredible diversity, incredible history, just wonderful, wonderful magic, and really make the show about that, its relationship to New York and the celebration of New York.

[2:38] Shanda Sawyer: So here you have this blank canvas, you know, and very exciting. You know, you have all these delightful acts to create. What happens next?

[2:53] Shanda Sawyer: Well, you know, the first step really was finding the acts. You know, when they brought me in, they didn't have a talent booker yet. So I was able to reach out. I had worked with Ringling Brothers for many years. They brought me in in 2006 to reimagine the whole Ringling Brothers circus. And that was such an adventure. You know, I feel so lucky to have had that adventure working with the Feld organization, who are just so knowledgeable and had really felt that they were the guardians of the circus tradition in the U.S. I learned so much working with them. And I made some incredible relationships. People that when I reached out and said, "Hey, you know, are you interested in coming on board this, you know, crazy circus train this year?"

They really jumped right up and said, "Wow, that would be so fun to work with you again, and I would love to do that." So I brought in an incredible talent director, Scott O'Donnell, who actually had been the GM of Big Apple for many years. So he was able to help me source talent from around the globe and here in the U.S., obviously. And we put together the most incredible roster of talent working together.

[4:05] Shanda Sawyer: It was important to me again, you know, working with this overall theme of celebrating New York. How would each act fit into that? How could I showcase either an incredible aspect of New York culture or a particular iconic location? You know, things that you think, of course, all the amazing, iconic sites of New York from the skyline to the Brooklyn Bridge, to the incredibly diverse neighborhoods and the melting pot that gives New York so much of its magic. So we were able to, I was able to really incorporate these acts within that. And then I knew that with this theme, I love visual storytelling. And within this medium in particular, within the context of a circus, you know, people are there to see a circus.

They're not there to see a Broadway show or a play or, you know, some verbose kind of highbrow entertainment, but you do want to move them and take them on a journey with a, you know, beautiful dramatic arc and take them to all these places emotionally that you want to go in a show. You know, you want to be told a story and you want to be taken on a ride.

[5:23] Shanda Sawyer: So I worked with an incredible projection designer, Sean Dwan, to design this full arena circular scrim that descends and ascends to give us the opportunity to take people into an immersive feeling of being inside a neighborhood or inside a culture. And then this scrim will lift and it reveals the act, or sometimes the acts actually occur within the scrim. We have one magical moment set in Central Park, actually a snow globe of Central Park that leads us into this beautiful aerial orb act by Sophia Petrov that takes place inside of a snow globe with the snow falling. I mean utilizing the scrim, which, you know, of course is such a magical element. I love working with light and projection and imagery. So yeah, I was very, very happy to, you know, to be able to include these incredible creative team members who were just wonderful collaborators and trying to create this world within the tent at Damrose Park until January 5th.

[6:37] Jeryl Brunner: And then you have these incredible artists. I mean, can you talk about some of the... you have trapeze artists, you have jugglers, you've people who work with poodles or they poodles or all kinds of dogs.

[6:39] Shanda Sawyer: Yes, aerial. Can you talk about some of those people?

[6:58] Shanda Sawyer: Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that really struck me about the circus world when I first got involved with wrangling is how much you fall in love with the people. I mean, circus artists are a breed unto themselves, you know, some of these people have been in that world for generations. Some have just found their way to it, you know, through their love of the art, but they share a sense of integrity and commitment and teamwork that I've never found in any other situation. And you genuinely fall in love with each and every act and artist because of that sense of, you know, we're in this together. Our safety depends on each other. I may do my own act, but I also support you and your act and make sure that your equipment is secure before that act begins, or I'm there to catch you if you fall. There's nothing more basic and incredible than that kind of support for each other.

[8:04] Shanda Sawyer: So in our show, we have these incredible artists that came from, as I said, all over the globe. We have an amazing Ethiopian slack wire artist, Miret, who came actually through France, but he's Ethiopian, which is amazing to be able to incorporate that aspect. And he does a beautiful segment that's based on a kind of a historic nostalgic look at the Harlem Renaissance and that beautiful contribution of black culture to New York and of course, you know, to our whole country.

[8:55] Shanda Sawyer: So you're right there in the trapeze act. You're just living every moment with them. It's just so visceral and so incredible. We also do an amazing Russian swing act, which you know, is this flying and again, it's up close. We actually have to move some people out of seats and put them onto this stage so that they can be there up close and personal because the wires come straight into the sea. So we, you know, it's just so immersive and so in your face. The poodles, if you mentioned, are delightful. They're all rescues from all over the world, and each one has their own personality and their own incredible, you know, little flavor, all the different tricks they do. We have one of the cutest contortionists I've ever seen in my entire life.

I mean, and normally contortion is sort of a strange beauty, and you know, you can look at it and go, wow, that's strange, but incredible. This girl is genuinely adorable and cute, Emerald, the most really incredible little gal. She's just turned 18, but she looks like she's 12, and she's just phenomenal. We have some incredible aerial acts and aerial cradle act, it's a beautiful young couple, Daniela and Alex, who are just extraordinary to watch the artistry and the intention to detail. And of course, we have incredible clowns, we have all this comedy and storyline, and you know, everything that you want when you walk into a show.

[10:37] Jeryl Brunner: What do you hope people take away after seeing the show?

[10:42] Shanda Sawyer: Well, you know, with Circus, I feel like I learned early on working with Ringling how important it is to fulfill people's expectations of what they're coming to see. People want thrills, they want spectacle, they want to last, they want to have their spirit elevated, you know. And it's so important to me as a creator to make sure that the show delivers on all of those expectations. But then it also takes people places that they weren't expecting to go, you know, to give them heartwarming moments to create a sense of possibility and whimsy in the world, things that you wouldn't expect and yet really open your heart and give you, you know, they send you out into the world with a renewed sense of hope and joy and hopefully a sense of love of humanity, because I feel like that really comes through in a circus.

You know, you're looking at people who do extraordinary things. They're right there in front of you. You're in the same room with them, in this case, a fairly small room, and really feeling the magic of that incredible human ability and possibility and the things that people can do if they really put their energy and their lives dedicated to something like that. So I think it's inspirational for everyone. But joy, happiness, I mean, come on, don't we need that?

[12:23] Jeryl Brunner: Yes, yes. And talk about inspirational. I was reading about you, researching you, and my goodness. I mean, you've produced, directed, created giant stadium shows. You've worked in every medium, worked in television all over the world. Can you talk about your lightning strikes moment? When you knew you had to be an artist, I know you started as a dancer, right? Or you were dancing.

[12:48] Shanda Sawyer: Yes, yes. Well, so I don't know how, and I think it's pretty normal for people that end up in the creative arts to have really started as children. But in my case, I genuinely do the exact same thing I did as a child now. Just the scale has changed. You know, I grew up in this crazy household. My parents were both artists and poets and writers. They were Unitarian ministers. Um, and during, you know, during those early years of social and cultural revolution, they were kind of leaders of that. And we had a lot of artists and musicians in and out of the house constantly. So we were raised in that email. In Berkeley, right?

[13:33] Shanda Sawyer: But uh okay. Yes, Berkeley, mostly in the Bay Area in San Francisco. Absolutely. Um, though we did live in LA for a while and Seattle for a while, in different churches that my dad had. But we always amused ourselves by creating things. I mean, we were the kind of kids that would go in the backyard and dig the Nile River and then flood it with a hose and have all these, you know, things in the embankment, or we'd take over a bathroom and turn it into a troll wonderland, and we make all the little costumes and little things. So it was kind of world-building from an early age. And then when I got into my teens, we ended up dancing on the street to make money. My family kind of fell apart a little bit for a while there.

And we, my sister and I ended up supporting ourselves by performing on the streets. So I always tell this story as it's so critical when you're dancing on the street to entertain people because they did not buy a ticket. They have no obligation to stay and watch their show. In fact, they have somewhere else to be. So in order to hold them long enough to get them to put some money in the tambourine, you know, you really need to entertain them and you need to grip them right away and you need to keep them involved. And it's one of the best trainings I think anyone could have for being an entertainer.

[14:57] Shanda Sawyer: And then I went to college and I intended to become a doctor because I couldn't imagine making a living in the arts and certainly didn't want to be, you know, destitute and poor my whole life. But at the point where I graduated, I had a theater company that became a huge cult hit in San Francisco. And at that point, you know, I graduated my pre-med and I did theater and pre-med as like a double major. And I just thought, you know, I'm young. This is my opportunity to do this. Let me push off med school for a couple of years, and I'll just see how things go after a couple of years here. And so we became this huge cult hit and had sold out shows every night.

[15:42] Jeryl Brunner: What was this theater?

[15:43] Shanda Sawyer: It was called the Rhythm Methods. And our show was so wonky. We did, we were dancers and choreographers and writers, obviously, my creative partner, Susie Miller, and I, but it was basically kind of a romp through the decades with social satire. But it was so goofy and silly, and it was all dance-based and crazy costumes, and we'd have all the seminal San Francisco comedians open for us, people like Nora Dunn and Dana Carvey, you know, just they'd be the opening act, and then we go into our show, and it became, you know, this big thing. All the hipsters came, and you know, we were riding high, and we just thought, okay, we have made it. We have made it. And so after like two years of that, I was like, well, you know, this seems to be working out.

Maybe I'll stick with this for a while. And then ended up going into television and stuff. But I don't know that I had ever had a lightning rod moment, you know, that sense of this is it. You know, it was really just a continuation of everything I had always done, you know, and just a scale of it and the medium became different. I got to work for Fox and directed a lot of comedy shows. And you know, you just you apply the skills you have and you learn new skills and you go, oh gosh, I don't know if I can do this, and then you figure it out and you get better at it.

[17:15] Jeryl Brunner: But how did you know it's just kind of what I've always just to go back to this theater, where did you go to college?

[17:21] Shanda Sawyer: First of all, I went to Lone Mountain College, which no longer exists, unfortunately. It was the liberal arts part of the University of San Francisco. And it would have an incredible program. You know, I did theater arts, video, uh, dance, obviously, just, you know, tons and tons of dance. And so it was very small. And I met my creative partner, Susie Miller, who helped me who we worked together on this theater company there. And, you know, things just were in your 20s, you know, it's like, okay, let's do it. Let's put on a show. And we worked in the nightclubs in San Francisco to, you know, support ourselves during college. I was the bar manager at the Boarding House, which is a very famous comedy and music club.

And she was the manageress of the male strip club down Columbus, beyond Broadway. And so we talked our bosses into giving us the down night, you know, like Sunday night at one of them and Monday night at the other. And we said, okay, well, we'll keep the door, and you can keep the bar, and we're gonna put on a show. And sure enough, you know, they're like, okay, you know, fine with us. And so that's what we did. Because the alternative, you know, we were dancers, and the alternative at that time was sort of, oh, you can rent this studio or theater and spend all this money to put on a modern dance show. And you know, it just didn't wasn't appealing to us. It was like, okay, we just want to do silly, entertaining things. And so we did, and people liked it, and it grew and you know, became sort of a little local phenomenon.

[19:04] Jeryl Brunner: So, what does directing give you and creating give you? How does that fulfill you?

[19:10] Shanda Sawyer: You know, it's funny. I was always a performer, and I became a very good performer. And there's something, you know, about that feeling of being on stage and being in a theater where you're really connecting with the audience and you're taking them somewhere, and it's just such a heady, wonderful feeling. And of course, as a performer, you fall in love with that, and you feel very good about that. I remember I was always creating and writing and choreographing at the same time. And I remember standing in the back of the Boarding House watching the audience and feeling that audience reaction and just thinking, this is so much more fun than being on stage and being the one performing it. The feeling of creating this moment for people was just so satisfying. And it was just it was even more alluring, I guess, in a way, than performing and being the one up there. It was like, how can I do more of this?

[20:15] Jeryl Brunner: You know, and there's been so much more. Congratulations, and thank you for being on the show. It's lovely to have you.

[20:23] Shanda Sawyer: Oh, thank you so much. And please, people go to bigapplesircus.com, get your tickets. The show only runs till January 5th. So it's your chance to see a really, really fun show. The audiences are loving it, and this cast is a dream. They're just such an amazing cast and such incredible performers.

[20:44] Shanda Sawyer: Thank you.

[20:45] Jeryl Brunner: Thank you. It still happens every day. We're lightning strikes. It's the moment. The theme song was written by Tom McGovern. This episode was edited by Sarah Goodman and produced by Anna Strout. Lightning strikes.